The Final Countdown? Meltdown with Keith Olbermann Part 31

David Forsmark is the owner and president of Winning Strategies, a full service political consulting firm in Michigan. David has been a regular columnist for Frontpage Magazine since 2006. For 20 years before that, he wrote book, movie and concert reviews as a stringer for the Flint Journal, a midsize daily newspaper.

Remembering this self-deluding rant last year when Bill O’Reilly dared to mock Keith Olbermann’s ratings?

OLBERMANN: I hate to intrude with the facts, but ours is the highest rated cable news program [among] viewers 35 and younger, and the highest rated cable news program for all viewers not on Fixed [i.e., Fox] News. And since Fixed News has now migrated completely over to serving propaganda to tinfoil hatters, conspiracy theorists, paranoids and racist, it’s not a news organization, making THIS [Olbermann's] show the highest-rated cable news program, period.

It’s common knowledge that Keith gets his butt kicked by Bill O’Reilly on a nightly basis—just as the rest of the MSNBC schedule gets tromped by the rest of Fox’s schedule. DailyFinance.com reveals that while Keith Olbermann fanices himself a rival—if not a nemesis—for O’Reilly, the truth is, he’s no factor.

DAILYFINANCE.COM: Ratings for Olbermann’s Countdown have been soft recently, and the 8 p.m. shows on CNN and HLN have narrowed the gap. In the important demographic of adults 25 to 54 — the group advertisers are looking to reach – Countdown was down 44% year-over-year in January. It averaged 268,000 viewers in that demo, only 3,000 more than Nancy Grace’s show on HLN, and 12,000 more than CNN’s Campbell Brown. Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor dominated the hour with 964,000 viewers age 25 to 54, and was the only cable news show in the time period to increase its audience, by 55%.

Gee, tinfoil sales must be way up. Note to self: call your broker…

This news means that in all likelihood, more people have seen this Jon Stewart takedown of Keith Olbermann than saw any of the segments Stewart mocks—or all of them put together. (Yes, I know, it’s a stretch, but I am nowhere NEAR tired of watching this yet!)

But in the news of Olbermann’s decline, even DailyFinance.com missed the even better story– He’s shedding viewers like my Golden Retriever sheds her coat in the Spring, but Keith Olbermann is the HIGHEST rated show on the ratings graveyard known as MSNBC.